Originally posted on Livejournal for the Strifehart Kink Meme. And now for some mandatory disclaimer stuff:
Disclaimer: I in no way own the Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts franchises. All I own is spiffy stuff I buy and the Squall plushie I snuggle with regularity. And I certainly don't own any works by Evanescence, especially not the song 'Missing' that played on my playlist and encouraged me to try my hand at filling this prompt. Don't sue; I'm simply an E-6 in the USN, and therefore have no money. Ha.
Prompt: Set after KHII. Something weird is happening to Cloud and his friends... After Leon finally rebuilt Radiant Garden he disappears. Cloud is desparate to find his lover, but as time goes on he starts forgetting Leon. Leon actually never really disappeared. Sephiroth got a hold of him (who revived ONCE AGAIN) and shows him Cloud... Cloud, Tifa, Yuffie, Aerith, Sora and Cid desperately try to find Leon before they forget him completely but it doesn't work. The last thing they see before they forget him completely is a broken Leon who calls for Cloud. Months go by and no one remembers the man who did so much for them. But then one day Cloud comes across his and Leon's old home. He sees pictures of him and Leon. But who is Leon? Slowly he gets his memories back. But can he save Leon in time before he really disappears?
Bonus points for angst, happy ending. And if the song 'Missing' by Evanescence comes in to the story.
Prelude
Missing
His feet stirred the dust.
Head hanging, hair brushing over clammy skin and shielding gunmetal eyes from the world, the thin and haggard figure continued his drifting shuffle to an undetermined destination. Hands, long since fallen limp and cool despite the leather casings that gripped them, brushed lightly over the long silver zippers that raced up legs that tiredly kept their unending rhythm going despite any motivation to continue the seemingly endless journey they perpetuated having long since fled the heart of the individual they carried.
The gray clouds that made up the sky swirled slowly, swallowing the scant sound of thick heavy boot soles scraping over gravelly ground and stirring long settled dirt.
The eternal staggering finally came to an end. There was no longer an available imagined path to walk.
The abysmal depths of emptiness whirled below the small overhang the leather-clad man was standing upon, inviting yet frighteningly hallow.
Soulless eyes finally lifted their gaze from the ground, staring out into the nothing that dominated their reality.
Seconds had ceased to exist. Minutes hadn't ticked by in any recent memory. Hours had been swallowed by oblivion. Time itself had finally come to an end.
Numb fingers clenched empty air, their strength long decayed. A dead atmosphere weighing upon the thin figure instilled its chill into flesh covered in thin leather and thick jacket, sending bumps of cold racing over bare arms and under belts strapped to a forearm.
Blinking once, the man who occupied the sullen, empty wasteland finally let himself sag to the ground, his strength finally completely gone. Looking to the nonexistent heavens, he let a deep sigh seep from his lungs.
There would be no white feather this time.
No one was looking for him.
Lying back in the dust, not having the compulsion to care that it was coloring his black jacket and pants gray with its fine particles, the man let his empty eyes drift shut.
They had won.
Past darkness. Future threat. Bending space and time themselves, joining to eradicate the nemesis of one and the interference standing between a desire and the destined obtainer of that desire for the other. A dark one-winged beast, crawled from the darkness of a tainted heart, had segregated the weakest link in the culmination of light-drenched hearts - that oddly-limbed monster with his long silver hair and long silver sword pried loose the one peg that didn't fit nicely in the puzzle, approaching him when he was away from the rest of the pieces. A silver-haired witch with black-feathered angel's wings had gathered the one separated and thrown time itself into a wild array around that displaced being, forcing him into a phantasmal existence passing between time and space and reality itself.
Ages ago he had cried for help, his blade having been left at his abode and his hand having thrown the spade he'd been using for spackling the final repair in his life's work. He'd reached vainly for a nearby companion, crying his name.
And time had vanished.
His imagination, tired and dying like the rest of him, had long since ceased in its hoping for salvation, for someone to figure out where or when he'd gone or who could locate him. His dreams had gone unrealized and his prayers unanswered for more lifetimes than he could fathom.
He'd been missing since the beginning of time itself, erased from the terminal future of reality, stripped from every present.
As black feathers whirled into existence above him, his heart refused to stir - he knew what was coming.
A glimpse of the ones he considered friends, a fleeting glance at the ones who had once captured his heart. A vision of the town he claimed as a home, a sighting of the Keyblade and its bearer in that serene villa.
Why the visions continued, he couldn't comprehend. Perhaps this was a part of the loop of time he was trapped in, a residual smear of energy that had been errantly thrust into the warp of existence and had yet to completely dissipate.
Its initial purpose, to eradicate his will to truly live, to break his heart and his soul, had been accomplished long ago.
He'd already watched everyone cease their searches for him. He'd already watched the memorials fade into obscurity. He'd already witnessed the death of any caring anyone may have once held for him pass.
Without fail, the feathers formed a rift in the gray clouds above, parting the nothingness and presenting a clear window through time.
He looked without hope or happiness down upon the simple room and its one inhabitant, his window to that particular reality an angel's view upon a common denizen of a world.
Once upon a time, he may have screamed names, lunging for the visions that taunted him from unreachable distances. In the nearly forgotten past, he may have softly whispered pleas for forgiveness. He may have uttered the realization that he wouldn't be returning - the one-winged beast who'd so deftly segregated him from his ill-fitted fold, delivering him to the one who held him in more contempt than any other being in all of time and space, had seen to that reality.
Though his heart lay still within his breast, his mouth still uttered the words without any compulsion and hardly any breath. "Please, please forgive me... but I won't be home again."
He watched, his eyes empty and haunted as he saw the one in that clear window to some time, some reality he could no longer be a part of, look up towards him. And as Cloud Strife's lips moved, his soft voice directed to no one and whispering "Isn't something missing?" the lost man's cheeks were finally touched by tears.
-to be continued-